


Reunit[E]

by Shinaka



Category: NieR: Automata (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-07
Updated: 2017-04-07
Packaged: 2018-10-15 22:12:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10558530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shinaka/pseuds/Shinaka
Summary: 9S and Pascal meet again during Route C.Do NOT read unless you have finished route C. I am SERIOUS about this.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I openly sobbed while erasing Pascal's memories days ago and even though I've (sort of) calmed down since then, meeting Pascal again as 9S after the factory event with A2 really got me all kinds of emotional again.

Even though he should be at the next Resource Recovery unit at the Flooded City, 9S finds himself stepping out of the transporter in Pascal’s Village.

 

Loath as he is to admit that Pod 153 is correct, 9S knows that he is wearing down. Making more mistakes in combat. Taking inefficient hacking maneuvers. Sinking in grief and rising only out of rage.

 

_This is a mistake_ , he immediately thinks as the door swings open and his feet fully alight on the crude wooden planks of the village. _This isn’t what I need to do at all –_

 

But his processors quickly seize upon the silence that hangs upon the village. The only place where machine chatter would not grate upon the nerves and there is nothing. The answer as to why is obvious once his eyes sweep around the area – here and there lie broken machines or what remains of them.

 

He cannot recognize who they used to be but he cannot determine whether that is for the better. Machines that called themselves sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, even philosophers - all of them reduced to homogenous parts that he slowly walks past. He cannot even muster joy in there being fewer machines in the world here. This is just one more constant that has been ripped from him, along with 2B and the Bunker.

 

As he rounds the bend in the main level of the village, 9S notices a familiar brown machine that is not among the identical gray parts littering the ground. Against the cynicism of recent days, the small relief he feels at seeing steam rise from the vibrating back of Pascal is odd and not entirely reconcilable. But 9S pushes forward nevertheless to the machine because that is all he knows to do now. Forwardforwardforward.

 

“Pascal, is that you?” He calls out as he draws closer. “What happened here?”

 

Pascal turns around, green eyes as open and welcoming as always. 9S expects a burst of recognition, maybe even surprise that 2B is not with him – and he realizes too late that he did not anticipate how to respond to such a question. 

 

But the machine’s next words are nothing like he expects.

 

“Hi there, I’m just cleaning up the junk around here! Really, there’s such a mess here!” His voice is serene, even as the broom in his hands sweeps a machine head into a small pile of other heads. 

 

_Weren’t those your people?_ 9S wants to ask. _What happened to you?_ The android also wants to ask. _Why is this happening?_ He does not ask.

 

The brown figure prattles on, bereft of the consideration and thought he gave his words before. “Pascal, you say? That sounds familiar… Oh, I’m running a shop now! Have to clean up this mess somehow!"

 

Behind Pascal is a large box, on top of which lay machine parts, carefully sorted and arranged unlike the ones on the ground. Arms, legs, torsos, heads with identical eyes staring at him. The glow and inkiness of small machine cores.

 

9S knows instantly that the cores belonged to the children. He and 2B have fought too many machines to not know the size and weight of a normal machine core.

 

When Pascal notices the long look 9S gives the cores, he asks, “Ah, are you interested in what I have?” When 9S does not respond, however, the machine simply shrugs and turns back to sweeping up – _his brethren_ – his surroundings.

 

Why the Scanner is shocked, he doesn’t know. Pascal is just a machine in the end. A convincing facsimile of complex emotions and thoughts that attempted a pacifist utopia. A facsimile nevertheless.

 

But 9S does not want to be in the village any longer. It is only another graveyard.


End file.
